I'm the Detroit bureau chief for Forbes, which means I spend most of my time covering the automotive industry. But I also keep an eye on the rest of America's heartland—where stuff is manufactured and grown. I've been on the auto beat for more than 20 years at Forbes, Business Week and the Detroit Free Press. At the Boston Globe, I rode the tech bubble for a while, but I found there's nothing quite as fun as the auto beat. Whether you drive a car or not, everyone has an opinion about cars or car companies. What's yours?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions — because goodness knows, everyone seems to have an opinion on this one — but I find Broder’s response at least plausible. He was inexperienced with the car and relied on information from Tesla representatives, who it seems might have given him some bad advice. At the very least, I think Broder’s response shows that he was in constant communication with Tesla people throughout his two-day drive and he did not maliciously lie about his experience.

There are a couple of unanswered questions remaining, however, like why Broder cannot account for a discrepancy between the fact that he “recalled” setting the cruise control to 54 mph, yet Tesla’s logs showed he was traveling about 60 mph. And what effect, if any, did the car’s smaller, all-weather tires have on its performance?

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Not all that long ago, cell phones had lousy battery life, crummy reception and extremely spotty coverage. I remember testing a “Motorola StarTac,” when mobile phones were just starting to become justifiable for regular folks. Compared to today’s phones, or the land lines of the day for that matter, they were horrendous! Now you feel naked leaving the house without your phone.

Early adopters pave the way, innovative technology improves. Um, we’ve seen this movie how many times before? Broder’s experience notwithstanding, the Model S serves notice that electrics are here to stay and will only get better.

@Joann Broder’s story is just great to fit your opinion on EV’s, but what if this had been any other story? How would you feel about a journalist’s credibility if he was caught on several lies in his article (speed, climate control, driving in circles on a parking lot)? How would you value his other claims under those circumstances?

Reporters can be glib and untruthful, do a huge amount of damage and never see it, much less be accountable. The discrepancies between the computer history and Broder’s report are large. Note that every discrepancy disfavors Tesla.

Running a negative story about a completely new car could well kill it regardless of its merit as a product. Never mind the hundreds of millions invested, ignore the many thousands of hours people put into making it and promoting it, don’t worry about sinking a new company (and the jobs of hundreds) with cheap talk. I don’t know if the Tesla is a decent car or not. I do know what the press is.

Its my opinion that the opinion given in the below statement does not consider the facts.

“but it doesn’t change my belief that electric cars aren’t ready for the mass market. In fact, it only reinforces my opinion.”

The “mass” in “mass market” typically is a result of population and population resides in “cities”. Statistical studies and self analysis will reveal that most commutes in the US are 40 miles or less. So add a few errands to the 40 miles and adjust for range reducing speeds/weather and battery age over the life of the car and 160 – 260 plus miles of range will accomodate all but a very few trips taken in a give year. Add this fact to the consideration that many but not all families have multiple cars so that maintaining one extended range (Chevy Volt) or gasoline vehicle (you choose) along with one or more fully electric cars would work great and reduce the families expenses by several hundred dollars a month for each car so configured (not to mention the costs of pollution, oil related war costs, and deaths). Imagine replacing 50 – 85% of all cars in the greater Chicago or New York area over night. Then imagine the increase in buying power of that population. Then consider the reduction in dependency on foreign oil or oil in general. Now consider the pollution reduction. Now consider the potential to reduce costs of oil and benefits this might have on manufacturing that actually requires oil and follow-on hiring etc etc etc.

The Electric Car is beyond mass market ready. That said, I presume that this technology and the costs to deploy will improve substantially in the next ten years.

I’m guessing that in years past an individual familiar with horses …, who first drives an automobile would have problems and complaints. Didn’t mean the automobile wasn’t read for “mass market”. Just meant some “education” might be required …, but then we’ve all heard that before.

You might find this interesting: http://www.americanautohistory.com/Articles/Article005.htm

I don’t understand how you could state that “electric cars aren’t ready for the mass market” without at least adding that the true issue is related to the charging stations network. Would gasoline cars be ready for the mass market if there were only a few gas stations in your country? Are Oil companies paying you electric-cars skeptics any money?! wake up!

Vasco – I think we agree on this point. This is what I concluded in an earlier story (Feb. 14) related to this subject: But until the price of electric vehicles falls dramatically and there is a national network of charging stations as prevalent and easy to access as today’s gas stations, electric cars will be nothing more than niche vehicles.

I think that instead of saying electric cars aren’t ready for the mass market, perhaps I should have said “the mass market is not ready for electric cars.”

To your point, Joann, that’s exactly what Musk/Tesla said they’d do, and appear to be doing. Their first car, the Roadster, was truly a plaything for the rich at $90k plus.

Today, the lowest-end “S” can be had in the neighborhood of $55k, and charging stations are slowly rolling out around the country. Future Tesla offerings are marching steadily downmarket toward the motoring masses (see “Model X and BlueStar”). Several mobile phone apps will let you find EV charging stations all over (and not just Tesla Superchargers) right now, today.

In short, this technology is a megatrend. It has momentum. It’ll be mainstream sooner than most people realize.